We are excited to announce that Anthropology Ph.D. student Sally Applin will be visiting from San Francisco to speak at CyborgCamp Portland! Sally is also known as @anthropunk on Twitter, and is heavily involved in the study of open source, mobile and steampunk ideologies. She’s also an early adopter of technology, evidenced by the fact that she owns Sally.com.

About Sally

Applin is a Ph.D. student at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, in the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing (CSAC). She holds a Masters degree from the graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) within New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a BA in Conceptual Design from San Francisco State University. Sally has had a 20 year career in the science museum design, computer software, telecommunications, and product design/definition industries working as a Senior UX designer and ethnographic researcher.

At Kent, Sally is advised by Dr. Michael D. Fischer, Professor of Anthropological Sciences, Director of CSAC, and Director of Enterprise. Dr. Fischer is the founder of Anthropunk, a movement that examines how people promote, manage, resist and endure change; hack their lives (and those of others); and create the context of the individuation of their experiences. Sally is a founding member of Anthropunk and is currently researching the impact of technology on culture, and the consequent inverse: specifically the reifications of Virtual Space in Personal Space.

Cloaked Cyborgism

Sally will discuss the notion of the “invisible cyborg.” Cyborg modification that is unseen by others by being cloaked or embedded can create the invisible cyborg in humans. For example, one might have an ankle with a titanium implant in it. That cyborg ankle is there, but unseen to others. Dick Chaney’s heart was cyborg and unseen for a long time. Now it is seen because he has to wear an external device mounted on top of his chest. The notion of “Invisible Cyborg” can be also be created as a goverment policy or plan that subsequently impacts large groups in a seemingly “invisible” way. Slavoj Žižek touches on topics tangential to these concepts. For instance, “trillion-dollar organisms” – patented bugs excreting biofuels, generating clean energy or producing tailor-made food. There are ideas of synthesising new viruses or other pathogens. Extreme genetic engineering may create substantially different organisms: we’ll find ourselves in a terrain full of unknowns. In the west, we have debates about whether we should intervene to prevent disease or use stem cells, while the Chinese just do it on a massive scale.

Applin’s talk will discuss many more concepts in greater detail, and will invite discussion on what the future might hold for humans, machines, and the things that are in-between.

Mathew Lippincott is doing amazing things with balloons, like building ones that can take aerial photos of the Gulf of Mexico. He’s also toxicologist and the one to ask if you’re curious about the plastics in your house or car. One of his strongest areas is in the field of waste management and sewage systems.

Sewage is something everyone contributes to but never sees. It’s an important part of everyday life, but it is rarely discussed. This is why Matthew Lippincott is going to speak about it. If we’re lucky, he might show a few DIY aeiral photography balloons as well.

Abstract of Mathew’s talk:

Your toilet is the human interface for a baroque yet ineffective mechanical system whose outdated and moralizing logic is re-enforced with every flush. This talk will cover the class-based ideologies of hygiene and control that drove installations of municipal sewage in the 19th century, and what “waste” management might look like in a networked world conscious of biology.

Who is Mathew Lippincott?

A designer and artist residing in Portland, Mathew’s work addresses augmentation, autonomy, and aerospace. Recent projects include balloon construction and commodity plastics assessment with Grassroots Mapping and de-digitizing animation processes with Fernando Renes. With partner Molly Danielsson, he is currently launching the Cloacina project, an all-out assault on sewage systems. Mathew and Molly also work with partner organizations PHLUSH and ReCode Oregon. Lippincott’s work has been displayed in Portland, LA, New York, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid.

DIY Aerial Photography

Here’s a video of Lippincott’s super cheap DIY aerial photography balloon project. He sent a bunch of these with Max Ogden to MIT kids who used them to photography the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico.

In my opinion, Marshall Kirkpatrick and his work at Read Write Web represents the future of Journalism. But don’t take my word for it, you’re going to be able to see him speak at CyborgCamp. Marshall will talk about how new kinds of human and machine systems can be combined for fun, profit, competitive advantage, career advancement and to change the world.

Journalism, Information, and Time and Space Compression

Marshall is someone who can bend time and space. He can reduce the amount of time required to get information from place to another. He can architect machines that allow information to flow to a single point, or a series of points, where they can be best digested and written about. This is why it is a great honor for me to announce that Marshall Kirkpatrick will be keynoting CyborgCamp Portland 2010.

I was introduced to Marshall around 2.5 years ago during lunch at a small restaurant in SE Portland. Almost immediately, I felt my brain speeding up just by talking to him. Here was someone, I thought, who really, really understood what was going on right now and in the future. But that’s not why I found him to be so epic. What really made me happy was that he applied it. Every day Marshall pushes the human limits of what’s able to be done with humans, information, and technology. That’s why it is so exciting to have him speak at CyborgCamp this year.

About Marshall K

Marshall Kirkpatrick is Co-Editor and Lead Writer of ReadWriteWeb, one of the leading technology blogs on the web and a syndication partner of the New York Times. He specializes in covering magical geeky things on the internet and likes to translate forward-looking technical developments into accessible language so that non-technical power users, early adopters and developers can grasp the excitement of development platforms. He also writes about privacy, user data and how to build a career out of little more than clever ways to poke RSS feeds. You can follow him on Twitter @marshallk.

About Read Write Web

ReadWriteWeb provides web technology news, reviews and analysis to an intelligent audience of web enthusiasts, early adopters and innovators. See it in action at http://www.readwriteweb.com.

Did you get your tickets yet?

There are still tickets available, but you should probably get yours soon, as they are evaporating quickly! For $10 you get breakfast, lunch, drinks, a pre-party and an entire day of events.

We’re proud to announce the addition of another featured speaker at CyborgCamp Portland 2010: Max Ogden! He’s going to speak on maps, sharing, and the civic web. Expect a humorous and informative ride through a new way of looking at data, government and open source.

Meet Max!

Max Ogden is a developer, open government, Geo and CouchDB enthusiast from Portland, OR. His name is becoming synonymous with open government applications community, especially in Portland, where with he recently won the Civic Apps award for best overall utilization of data with his site PDXAPI, a developer interface to civic geo datasets in Portland, OR. He recently gave a presentation called ‘Building an open geo-wiki using GeoCouch’ at Ignite Spatial Boston (slides here).

Last weekend, Max Ogden and Reid Beels participated in an open government hackathon in Seattle, Washington. They built an app in less than 24 hours and won the competition for best use of Tropo, an open API for SMS, E-mail and Speech. Their app allowed one to draw a shape on a map and subscribe to SMS alerts for things that happen inside that shape. Max’s friend Russell Branca is building a companion version to PDXAPI for the city of Seattle!

Max has a rediculously curious beard, enjoys root beer, hacks on tons of projects in his spare time and likes to ride his bike all over town. You can find him Monday nights hacking at @nopoconi (also known as the North Portland Coder’s Night) at Lucky Lab Tap Room on North Killingsworth.

We are proud to accounce that Tyler Sticka will be giving a featured speech at CyborgCamp Portland 2010! More details to come soon.

About Tyler Sticka

Tyler Sticka is a designer, artist, speaker, educator and Senior Experience Designer at Waggener Edstrom Studio D. Apprenticed at the Art Center College of Design while still in high school, the prospects of the web and new media enticed him to earn a Bachelor of Science in Interactive Media Design from the Art Institute of Portland. He has since produced work for clients such as Microsoft, McAfee, Providence Health & Services, Synnex and many more. He is the creator of the award-winning Twitter mashups Portwiture and TweetPlus. His Flash game Ramps was a featured Download Squad “time waster” and has been enjoyed by nearly a million players on this site alone.

Always enthusiastic to share his ideas and stimulate discussion, Tyler has taught design, typography and web standards classes at the Art Institute of Portland, and has presented his thoughts on interaction design, comics and modern art at WebVisions, DevGroup NW, Refresh Portland and WordCamp Portland. After deadlines are met, Tyler possesses a great affinity for comic books and rock n’ roll.

Presentation, Discussion and Analysis: The Field of Cyborg Anthropology

Cyborg Anthropology is the study of the interaction between humans and computers, and how the capabilities of our bodies are extended externally and uploaded into hypertext. We are all Cyborgs. Increasingly, we are purchasing and discarding extensions to our selves. We’re also becoming an interface culture. How we interact with machines and technology in many ways defines who we are. Cyborg Anthropology is a lens with which to understand what’s happening to us in a world mediated by dynamic objects, processes and change.

The shape of a site’s architecture makes people move, and the flow of people shapes how a site transforms over time. Profiles and avatars allow users to represent themselves asynchronously—that is, they are another extension of connection and etiquette that can be optimized or used poorly. These extensions of presence allow people to be accessed when they aren’t even there. Each of us is becoming a celebrity cyborg; a famous machine.

This session will be part presentation, part discussion, and part analysis. Comments, deconstructionist thoughts and debates are welcomed. Help be a part of a new and evolving field of study.

Hailing from PDX, Case is the founder of CyborgCamp, and has spoken at Ignite, MIT, Gnomedex, and many other events. You can find her at caseorganic.com. We’re thrilled to have her!